Looks like they've come up with a new catch cry - progressive. The regress they create is definitely progressive.

What I find most disturbing about this article is not so much the raft of trendy issues that the Professor mentions, but rather, the apparent conflation of these issues with critical thinking. Despite the claim that these issue are "beyond left and right", the issues are actually moral and value laden. Critical thinking skills is not so much about taking a moral position on a matter, it's actually about understanding how a phenomenon is constructed - it's about pulling apart an issue and seeing what all the contributing elements are. The Professor is taking a moral stance on these issues, and is not engaging in critical thinking.

It's one of the major problems with the Humanities and Social Sciences departments at the moment; conflating "progressive" moral judgements with critical thinking. This is why 90% of graduates come out of the department singing the same chorus on these trendy issues; they haven't been taught how to think, they've been taught what to think.

Good post, Aristocrat. You boys (girls?) are really on the ball today.

Aristocrat,

Your comments about critical thinking strike a cord, or should I say a thread which seems to permeate much of the socialized (moral and value laden) fabric of “progressiveness”.

We are led to believe from all the prognostications offered by humanities academia, Fairfax, ABC, political elites, advocates and social engineers in general, that those who do not subscribe to their ideology are “plebs” with many juvenile and offensive descriptions, yet those who do subscribe to rhetoric are presented as “thinkers”?

Now this is curious. You rightly point out that the attributes of critical thinking are more about analysis. Moral and value judgments can play a role however, this is only relevant after critical analysis and not as a substitute.

Critical thinking had been variously defined as "the mental process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating information to reach an answer or conclusion" and "disciplined thinking that is clear, rational, open-minded, and informed by evidence".

If one is able to accomplish critical thinking, any conclusions drawn can be defended logically.

If this process is bypassed and replaced by only moral and value based criteria, the conclusions drawn are difficult to defend and are often replaced with rhetoric delivered with angst, venom and belligerence.

Socialization though morals and value are removing the rigor upon which non humanities topics are analyzed. Without the discipline of “is it true?” backed up with the harsher discipline of “does it work?” there is only rhetoric.

The socialization advocates promote abandoning the idea of non humanities subjects as a separate domain of activity and enquiry, they promote that these must be understood not as a means of acquiring objective general truths about the world, but simply as another form of social behavior!

This of course is alien to critical thinking or for that matter, any thinking at all.

Progressives are in fact those who accept the ideological mantra without critical thinking.

The conclusion must be drawn that the real thinkers are the plebs and the progressives live in a world of rhetoric. No thinking required, just the ongoing quest for relevance.

James what is the difference between your view of the role of government, and fascists view of the role of government?

Hi spindoc. Good points there. You too, Lego.